(Take a look at that custom uppercase C though. Hot.)
I’m writing a column for Library Journal called The User Experience. It’ll appear every other month.
In this month’s I explain what UX is, make the case for librarians as designers, and even talk about Paul Renner.
Every time librarians create a bookmark, decide to house a collection in a new spot, or figure out how a new service might work, they’re making design decisions. This is what I like to call design by neglect or unintentional design. Whether library employees wear name tags is a design decision. The length of loan periods and whether or not you charge fines is a design decision. Anytime you choose how people will interact with your library, you’re making a design decision. All of these decisions add up to create an experience, good or bad, for your patrons.
I posted about the font service site Typekit at INFLUX’s blog the other day. Neat site. It inspired me to retool what’s going on here design wise. Funny thing is that I ended up having a he’s-just-not-that-into-you experience with all of the fonts available through Typekit. Oh well. Helvetica Neue/Helvetica/Arial it is. You could say I’m going through a real Crate&Barrel phase.
(Take a look at that custom uppercase C though. Hot.)
I’ve been having a ton of fun using Posterous to collect things I like. I didn’t know if I’d stick with it but all the effort is in curating stuff, the fun part. It’s so easy to use it’s become part of my routine.
I’m going to use the Posterous autopost feature to send content here. It might not be strictly library related so if you get bored of the stuff I collect online you can use the Walking Paper strictly libraries only feed. There will certainly still be library content here but much of the library user experience stuff I’m into these days is ending up at INFLUX’s blog [feed].
| Who | Amanda Etches-Johnson and I |
| What |
a library user experience consultancy |
| Why | because we love libraries and UX work, so we put them together |
| For | libraries wanting to improve their websites and in-house services |
| How | many ways! |
| What Else |
a blog and a fun contest to kick things off! |
At the risk of people starting to think that I’m turning into a total retrogrouch (not true, btw) I’ll say that some of my most productive moments of the past year have been far away from a keyboard.
[via ACL]
→ Semi-new logo
→ Semi-new color scheme
#fe007a
#808080
→ New typography via cufón
Cufón displays typefaces not included with browsers but doesn’t require Flash. It is a bit easier to use than sIFR. I was originally going to just specify “Futura” as the first value for my H2 selector as a treat for those that have the font installed on their machines but then decided to use cufón so everyone could see it. It is a nice but not perfect solution. To see it in action click through to walking paper if you’re in your reader and look at post headlines. I’m into ALL CAPS now.
→ New plugins
